In the darkly comic mythological fable Cracking Zeus, playwright Christopher T. Hampton brings a vengeful goddess down to earth. But while the play, inventively staged by Reginald L. Douglas, reaches for divine comedy, Spooky Action Theatre’s production remains earthbound.
The angry deity in question is Hera (Nicole Ruthmarie), who deigns to set foot on Earth for the sole purpose of exacting revenge on one of her husband Zeus’ many mistresses by punishing the progeny of their affair.
That mistress would be Momma Jo (Lolita Marie), the founder, owner, treasurer, and pastor of a street corner chapel in the ’90s inner city, and her son Baniaha (Charles Franklin IV), the congregation’s youth group leader, is the ill-fated son of Zeus. Although, Baniaha doesn’t know who his father is.
He also doesn’t know that, like many a Bible thumper, Momma Jo didn’t use to walk the straight-and-narrow. But Rufus (DeJeanette Horne), the so-called “crackhead” who squats on the sidewalk outside the church, he knows. He claims to know a lot about Jo’s life before she found Jesus, while she does her best to keep the church youth far away from him and whatever truth he might reveal.
Still, drug-addled Rufus winds up holding court on the chapel’s new marble steps, pontificating sometimes wisely about the blights ravaging the city, and about the goddess who, at first, appears only to him. In a dynamic performance, Horne spins Rufus’ street philosopher revelries into a rich portrait of a mind and soul lost to addiction, though perhaps not irrevocably.
Marie’s jittery, domineering Momma Jo similarly offers a dense, colorful palette of tics and emotions that fill in some of those blanks she keeps buried in the past. In their vital supporting turns, Horne and Marie amp up the tension.
Playing the youth choir members, Bowie State’s Jacobie Thornton, and Howard U. acting students Destiny Jennings, Dupre Isaiah, and Christina Daniels as the most kindhearted of them, bring vibrant comedic energy to their roles as a veritable Greek chorus.
The emotional weight of the piece falls on Hera and Baniaha, however, and, in those roles, respectively, Ruthmarie and Franklin register the intention without the full force of feeling behind it.
Gorgeously costumed, if not that originally, in goddess white throughout, Ruthmarie conveys Hera’s haughtiness, expressed in her plummy, eloquent speeches. The language rolls off Ruthmarie’s tongue and sits there, a mellifluous sound signifying disdain and displeasure, but disconnected from the hurt and humiliation that might motivate this queen to plot something so evil as getting someone hooked on crack.
Douglas’ production realizes Hampton’s fanciful depiction of the crack-ridden ’90s with astute design and details — like the Washington Bullets jersey and FUBU tee on the kids — that also evoke the story’s nods to ancient Greek myth. From the chapel’s marble steps, to the Greek drama-masked figures whose haunting dance interludes signal a descent into a crack high, ancient and modern religion meet on Momma Jo’s corner.
There, Hampton lands the play’s surest insight, that crack didn’t just happen to the hood, but was a deliberately wielded weapon of mass destruction.
Cracking Zeus (★★☆☆☆) runs through Oct. 13, at Universalist National Memorial Church, 1810 16th St. NW. Tickets are $15 to $38. Call 202-248-0301, or visit www.spookyaction.org.
Not every couple has a fairy-tale beginning, or meet-cute origin story to share in "Awww"-inducing social media posts. Romance, for some, blossoms under less decorous circumstances. That's the case for W. Tre and Free, the Black queer couple at a crossroads in Tarell Alvin McCraney's brilliantly observed, and deliciously frank and funny love story We Are Gathered.
Tre and Free met at an outdoor cruising spot inside a city park, where men gather in the dark for surreptitious, mostly anonymous sexual hookups. It so happens that, for this couple, lust at first sight led not only to quick sex, but also a genuine connection that then grew into something deeper.
Signature Theatre’s high-octane rock musical paints Hunter S. Thompson as a counterculture icon, but leans too hard on hero worship and too little on meaningful insight.
If you don't know or don't recall what a big deal Hunter S. Thompson was, he's here to tell you how big a deal he was -- and why -- in Signature Theatre's The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, directed by Christopher Ashley.
In fiction, as he apparently was in life, the maverick writer is his own biggest fan, eager to blow his horn in this rock 'n' roll odyssey from Be More Chill creator Joe Iconis, who composed the music and lyrics, and co-wrote the show's book with Gregory S. Moss. Their story takes us through Thompson's unruly journey from middle-class kid in 1940s Louisville, Kentucky, to self-proclaimed major figure in American history, a leading voice of the '60s counterculture movement.
If there is one opera lost or won by its chorus and characters, it's George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. In this perfect storm of a story, it's all about the tight-knit fishing community that cradles, carries, and sometimes condemns its own. It's only if you believe in their hardscrabble lives and insistence on dignity that you feel what it means to lose them. In this respect, the Washington National Opera's Porgy and Bess absolutely nails it.
Of course, it starts with the vision of director Francesca Zambello and her talent for bringing intimacy to grand themes. Here, those themes run the gamut of ill-fated love: Porgy's tragic devotion, Bess' addiction to the dangerous Crown, and the reality that no union can outrun death.
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